From a press release:
The McKinley Foundation is accepting nominations of Champaign County residents and groups for its Sixth Annual Social Justice Awards. Awards will be presented in spring to a student, a student group, a community individual, and a community organization whose justice work makes a difference locally, nationally, or internationally. Students and student groups may be high school, community college, or university affiliated. The deadline for nominations is February 13, 2015.
Each of the four awards carries a $500.00 gift to benefit the two selected organizations and two additional organizations chosen by the student and community member award winners.
Application forms for the awards may be requested from socialjusticeawards@gmail.com.
Nominees should be exceptional in their social justice work, bringing about both awareness of injustice and real change to lives affected by it. Nominees must live or be based in Champaign County. An application may be filled out by anyone with a significant knowledge of the work. Groups and individuals may nominate themselves. The application includes a form and requires a one-page essay, both of which should be returned to the McKinley Foundation’s Social Justice Awards Committee via email, socialjusticeawards@gmail.com, or regular mail: Social Justice Awards Committee, McKinley Foundation, 809 S. Fifth St., Champaign, IL, 61820. Award recipients will be notified a week after the February 13th deadline for nominations and will be honored at an April gala.
McKinley Foundation, a Presbyterian organization, has been a significant force for justice during its almost one hundred years of service at the University of Illinois, supporting resettlement of Laotian refugee families and sanctuary for Central Americans, offering housing through the Men’s Emergency Shelter (now the TIMES Center), and daycare (through what later became the Marilyn Queller Child Care Center). McKinley continues to offer Scot Free, its long-running clothing exchange for students and community members, and currently hosts the Tap In Leadership Academy and the GOALS Project for teen parents. The foundation is fully inclusive of people who are LGBTQQ and recently rebuilt Presby Hall, now an environmentally state-of-the art residence hall.
To find out more about the Social Justice Awards or McKinley Foundation, please contact David Griffiths at (217) 722-2408 or socialjusticeawards@gmail.com.